sore hands from swimming?

sorry everyone - I guess I posted this in the wrong place, not about training logs!

If they are sore its usually because they are not use to handling the stress of what you are doing. They should get better with time.

our coach gets us doing drills where you wave your hand about whilst its out the water - no idea why but that may help?

Same here for my old coach. Make a fist every 10-15 strokes with each hand. I guess it gets the blood flowing or somthing but it works well. I won't do it for about the first 500 yds, then start doing it.

Edited by matthewjt 2006-05-28 8:25 PM

My hands get cramped too.  I figure it's from trying to hold my fingers together and straight.  I just shake them out every couple of minutes and try to relax them a bit.

Same thing happened to me when I started swimming a lot, it hurt quite a lot, but now it doesnt hurt much at all, only sometimes.

I bought a powerball, one of those spinning things, and i think it has really helped my hand strength.

Do you cup your hands when you swim? If so, you should stop and maybe that will help. The ideal position for your hand is for you to have a flat palm with your fingers slightly bent at the knuckle with your fingers slightly separated. If you are cupping or forcing your fingers together than you are unnecessarily tensing the muscles in your hands and fingers and are creating a smaller surface area over which you contact the water.

You can play around with this by trying to hold your hand different ways over a series of laps. You should find that by having a hand with slightly bent knuckles (a relaxed position) with your fingers slightly separated that it feels like you are pulling more water with each stroke and you should cover the same distance in less strokes (although you may need a fairly long distance to check this).

Mike

Edited by MikeB 2006-05-29 6:15 PM